


Little Cat on the Roof

by volti



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Anxiety, Balcony Scene, Cuddling & Snuggling, Episode: s03 Chat Blanc, F/M, Marichat | Adrien Agreste as Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Nightmares, Singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 00:53:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21467353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volti/pseuds/volti
Summary: Adrien's been having nightmares about something he never did. Knows forsurehe never did. But it feels like it happened, and it won't leave him alone. And there's only one place he can go to fix it. And there's only one person he can be.[Spoilers for Chat Blanc; proceed with caution!]
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 22
Kudos: 795





	Little Cat on the Roof

**Author's Note:**

> Are you ever working on a big project, and then you start planning another story? And then, as you're planning that other story, a little baby idea decides to set up camp and won't leave you along until you get to it?
> 
> Yyyyyep. Welcome to my favorite corner of the love square. Get cozy.

Adrien supposes it doesn’t matter which rooftop he’s sitting on. He’ll always languish without his lady.

He doesn’t know when he decided on this little tune, about a little cat sitting on a little roof. Honestly, he’d say it came to him first. No matter where it came from, he finds himself humming the melody, sometimes singing these simply lyrics under his breath when he hops from rooftop to rooftop on his weekend patrols, when Ladybug is out of sight. 

If there are other words, they’ve never come to him, and he gets the feeling they never will. And he’s not quite sure if it’s something he should be used to.

He’s had this feeling of losing things he’s not sure he ever fully had for a while now.

And it’s probably because of the dreams.

They came after the beret; that’s all he remembers. He can’t make the connection, doesn’t even know if there is one. He only knows that they crept in at all hours of the night, from every angle of his mind, and left him awake and shaking with the image of himself—Chat Noir, no some… some other creature, him and _not_ him—at the end of the world. Watching the moon. Admiring the still high seas, the closest he might ever get to the ocean again. Humming. Singing. Alone.

It isn’t as though he isn’t used to the loneliness, what with his father rarely around, his mother missing, and Nathalie and his bodyguard never quite being the people he ever wanted them to be. It isn’t even as though he’s never had dreams about being alone before; the thought of closed doors echoing through empty halls is more than easy to conjure up. This, though… this leaves him with a hollow sensation in his chest, like something—some_one_, everyone who’s ever been some kind of someone to him—was ripped from him, from the inside out. This leaves him crying at ungodly hours of the night, sobbing with his head in his hands, begging to be saved without ever knowing why, racking his brain and asking what it is he destroyed, craving the touch of Ladybug’s thumb as it dries away his tears and knowing full well he’s never, ever cried in front of her.

Plagg doesn’t know anything about it. Or if he does, he’s remarkably, uncharacteristically good at keeping quiet. The kindest thing he’s done this whole time is looked the other way. He’s never commented on the growing circles under Adrien’s eyes, even when his classmates have commented on them out of concern. Never once said a thing about Marinette watching more closely from one seat behind. Never even cracked a joke about thinking of cheese to dispel all those heavy, terrifying thoughts.

Adrien has to wonder, every so often, how many more of Plagg’s past holders have ever felt like this. If total destruction and self-isolation are just par of the course with carrying the Black Cat.

If any of them had mothers to hold them, coddle them, comfort them through the night when they were afraid to go to sleep themselves. If any of them even remembered their mothers once they weren’t children anymore.

The words—her words—are somewhere in his head somehow. It’s just been so long that they’re all garbled together, and he can’t piece any of them together for them to make the right kind of sense. It just might be the only thing that’s scarier than the dreams.

He has to get out for a while, he decides one night, long before he lets himself even think about getting into bed (and for what? to stay up for hours on end, singing to himself, because he’s afraid of the inevitable?). There’s only one way to do it, he knows, and there’s only one place to go.

Chat Noir can never stay at the mansion for too long once he’s transformed; there are too many risks, too many unanswered questions. So he sets up a mannequin in his bed, the way he always does when he’s out for the night, and he leaps out his bedroom window, and he’s free. He’s himself. He’s alone, somehow, but not lonely, and not for long. All he has to do is run, jump, fly his way across down with the help of his baton, and he’s there.

On Marinette Dupain-Cheng’s balcony.

He wouldn’t say his relationship with her is unlikely. _Unlikely_ has this _never-going-to-happen_ element to it, and, well, he can’t say he doesn’t believe in the impossible. (He kind of still does, even if he won’t admit to it.) But Marinette wasn’t exactly falling at his feet the first time they met—that afternoon when he kissed her hand and flexed for her and called himself her knight. In fact, she was probably rolling her eyes the whole time, completely different from the inexplicably stuttering, blushing girl who still sits behind him in class. 

And for some reason, he’s kind of come to like it that way. That they started the way they did because Ladybug tasked him with her, and because he grew from simply not minding her to… really, really liking her. That when he comes to her like this, she pulls no punches and sees through to the kind of person he actually is, as much as he’s able to let her without actually taking off the mask.

It’s nice to let someone see the boy who’s just looking for some company and freedom in the middle of the night. It’s nice that that someone is Marinette.

Being a fool for irony isn’t so nice—the fact that she sees the truest version of himself when he’s hiding in this suit—but it’s something he’ll have to live with.

The melody is starting to seep into his mind again—_a little cat on a roof_—and it feels like the only way he can get it out of his head, like most things, is to go along with it—_languishes without his lady._ He hums to himself at first, lonely in the early evening, until the words make their way to his lips, _a little cat on a roof,_ until they buzz in his chest and drift up to the full moon, _languishes without his lady_.

Until the hatch door opens—

_A little cat—_

—and there is Marinette, standing on her balcony in her pajamas with a blanket draped over her shoulders and a mildly horrified expression on her face, when he swivels around on his perch.

He’s never seen her look so scared. So speechless.

He’s never seen her look scared at all.

Eventually, she sinks to her knees, still staring at him, and wraps the blanket more tightly around herself. “You know what that sounds like?” she says. “Something out of a horror movie.” It sounds like she’s trying to crack a joke, to keep things light and familiar between them, but it doesn’t sound so funny to him. It almost makes him feel sorry for her, but Marinette isn’t the sort of person who wants or needs to be pitied.

Chat Noir cocks his head by way of greeting. “Nice to see you, too, Princess. I didn’t even know you liked horror movies.”

Marinette wrinkles her nose. “I hate them.” And then, when her eyes glitter with the light show of the Eiffel Tower in the distance, when she fumbles with the latch on her door, “Come on, get in. It’s cold out here.”

“Just like that, huh?” He smiles in spite of himself. “You should know better than to let strange boys into your room at night.”

“Yeah, well.” Marinette shivers. “You’re no stranger.”

Something seems… off about her tonight. He can’t quite place it. But she’s disappeared back into her room before he can bring it up, and he finds himself numbly following after her, into the dark, into the warmth.

He’s only been in Marinette’s room a couple of times, but never as Chat Noir. He came over once to train for the Mecha Strike III Tournament with her, and once when he agreed to model some of her clothes back when she started up her fashion design website. He hasn’t been back since then, but he remembers the little things. Mostly he remembers the taste of her parents’ spinach-and-salmon pie and her father’s homemade cookies, but also the decorations and sticky notes on her bulletin board, the miniature flower designs on the backs of her desk chairs, the red paper umbrella adorning her chaise longue and the organized clutter of her workspace. 

It’s all still here, surrounding her as she huddles up on the chaise with her blanket and a stuffed animal. It’s so _her_. It’s… adorable.

“Some things never change,” he muses to himself, forgoing the cat pun for now. There’ll be other opportunities. There are always other opportunities. He nods to the blanket. He can finally get a better look at it now that she’s turned on her desk lamp, though he shouldn’t be surprised by the design. It’s knitted—or maybe crocheted, he can never tell the difference—with a rose-colored yarn, a few handmade flowers decorating one of the corners. It looks warm, a comfortable weight. 

“Did your grandma make that for you?” he asks. He’s always wondered what it would be like to have a handmade thing from a grandmother. Or to have a grandmother who visited regularly. He barely has a cousin and an aunt.

Marinette shakes her head. She’s practically hugging the thing by now, the way a sick person might cling to a comfort object, even though she’s managing pretty decently in a hoodie and some sweats. Maybe even overheating. “I made it. It was kinda hard, but it didn’t turn out too bad.”

Chat Noir smiles from his place at her desk, his tail swishing and swiping at the floor. “’S nice.”

She pauses, looks between him and the blanket, and then gets to her feet. (What the hell—even her _slippers_ are cute.) Without a word, she shuffles over to him, unravels the blanket from her body, and lets it ripple in his lap.

His brow furrows. “You’re lending it to me?”

Awkwardly, Marinette rubs the back of her neck and apparently makes it a point not to look at him. “I’m giving it to you.”

“Hey, you don’t have to—”

“Unless pink isn’t your color or something.” She shrugs. “I can always make another one. Who knows? Maybe it’ll come out even better the second time around.”

Chat Noir thumbs the material, wishes he could feel it for real in his hands, and hopes Marinette won’t laugh or make fun on him when he presses the blanket to his cheek. “Pink could be my color.”

For the first time tonight, Marinette smiles. It’s faint, and it’s fleeting, but it’s there. “Let’s just say it’s the least I could do.”

“Well,” he says, “you can’t just say that and not expect me to ask what that’s supposed to mean.” He winks. “You know what they say about curiosity and cats, don’t you?”

He thinks he might be seeing things, but there’s a flicker of a second where Marinette looks… hurt. No, not hurt. _Devastated._

He never… never wants to see that look on her face again.

He tries to apologize for it, but she’s already waving it away, shuffling behind him to turn the lights down lower and to fiddle with the music player on her phone. Soon enough, there’s soft, easy rock music drifting around and between them, and she’s rummaging around for another blanket (God, how many does she have?). She curls up on the chaise again, and it’s not long before she’s bouncing her feet. She doesn’t quite follow the rhythm—it’s more like she’s looking for something to keep her busy—but Marinette’s always been like that. Following the pleasant tune of her own song.

He hums in thought, and it kind of sounds more like a purr, but Marinette doesn’t seem to mind it. In fact, it almost looks like she likes it. Like maybe it sounds like home, even though he’s pretty sure she’s never mentioned having a cat before. “I didn’t know this kind of music was your vibe.”

She’s got her chin in her hand and a meaningful look in her eyes—that’s the benefit of the suit; he doesn’t need her lamp to see that. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me, Chat,” she murmurs, and it would sound more fun and light and teasing if not for the way her eyes flutter away after.

He doesn’t exactly know what to say to that, so he sits with it, with her. Two people alone in the almost dark, barely connected. He could reach out for her hand if he wanted to, but he doesn’t see the point if he can’t actually feel her, warm and alive. So he flexes his own, tries to push the urge out through skin and muscle so he doesn’t have to feel it anymore.

It doesn’t work.

“So what’s it for?” he finally asks, daring to cut through the music.

Marinette fidgets in place before she answers, seemingly embarrassed to admit it. “For that night you took me out on the town.” She wraps her new blanket around herself, slithering to the floor. “With the candles and the rose petals and stuff. And when you carried me.” There’s an extra weight to her words, something that says, _please tell me you know what I’m talking about, because I don’t think I can stand the shame if you don’t._

How could he not? “It meant something to you? Even if it was for—for…” He pauses. “…Somebody else?”

After a moment’s thought, she nods, slow but sure of herself, and her gaze drops to the blanket in his lap. “It wasn’t meant for me,” she says, “but it got to be mine.”

They stew in that following silence for a while, Marinette idly tapping her feet to some hard-to-follow rhythm. They have these moments sometimes, where they either don’t know what to say, or do know exactly what to say and are just trying to find the right time to say it. Where they look around each other instead of at each other, and stew in each other’s comfort because they’re allowed to. They’re able to.

Eventually, Marinette speaks. She’s usually the one to break the quiet between them, but it’s hard to tell which of them is more anxious about letting it go on for too long without whatever flame they have dying away. But it’s what she says that cocks itself like a gun and barrels down any comeback he might have been loading up. “I’ve been… thinking about you more often, lately.”

It stuns him. In costume, it shouldn’t, but it does anyway, and he’s hoping thats her sight isn’t so keen that she can see him gawking on the inside.

She folds her arms, tries to curl up as tightly as possible. “Don’t make it weird, okay?”

“I’m not trying to,” he admits. He just doesn’t know whether to play up how flattered he is, or to scoop her up and feel how alive she is. How many times does her heart beat in a minute? How many beats does she think of him? And why does he want to know so badly? “But… why?”

Marinette narrows her eyes. “’Why?’”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong”—there’s the usual playfulness, bleeding back in, welcomed home—”anyone and _everyone_ should think of one of Paris’s greatest heroes. Celebrate them, even.” He flicks his tail in her direction, the buckle jingling around his waist. “But you’ve never been the type for all that fanfare. You don’t go falling at my feet all the time.” _Even though you should. Even though maybe I wish you would._

She raises a brow. “Does that upset you?”

“Nah.” Another swish, and his eyes go wide in the dark to let more of her in. “Actually, it’s kinda comforting.”

He doesn’t have heat vision, but he almost wishes he did. He just might be a little too curious to know if Marinette is blushing now. “I just have been,” she finally says, with all that hidden meaning of _there’s something else, but I can’t let you know._ There seems to be a lot of that with her. “I’ve just been thinking that… that I owe you better, I guess. I want to do right by you, because I—”

She pauses—freezes, actually, like the words are caught in her throat—and almost immediately quiets down. And for those few seconds, Marinette looks as lonely as he’s felt in all those dreams.

“Never mind,” she mumbles, and if he strains his ears it sounds like everything she must have wanted to say is sinking back down into the pit of her stomach. “Just. Know I want to be better to you. I’m going to be. If anyone deserves it, it’s you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I just do,” Marinette says, and there’s that hidden meaning again: _please, please don’t ask._ “If… if you’ll let me, I mean. Because… well, I’d like to think you like my company, if you keep on stopping by to see me—”

“I do,” he reassures her, and if he says it too fast, he doesn’t care. “More than you know, Princess.” _More than you ever will._

For a split second, Marinette wrinkles her nose, then kills her expression, as if afraid he might have seen it. (Of course he did, but he doesn’t mind. There’s something sort of welcoming about those little things—like how she rolls her eyes or gives him a playfully judgmental up-and-down.) “Well.” She sighs, perhaps letting go of every attachment and every inhibition with the way she draws it out. “Okay. Just know—”

“I know,” he says, tenderly, but he throws in a wink for good measure. “I heard you loud and clear.”

It’s… honestly a bit baffling, how determined she looks—well, more so than usual—in the dim light. All this, just to tell him she wanted to be good to him? Is that really something he—

He wants to end that thought with _deserves_, but the way Marinette is folding her arms tight and bouncing her leg makes it, and every thought that follows, disappear. Makes him think back to the dreams, and twists his gut, just the same as it feels when he bolts awake and tries to tremble and cry it all out. And God, the last thing Marinette deserves to feel is alone and anxious. And maybe… maybe she thinks it’s the last thing he deserves, too.

If it’ll ease her conscience, then… well, he’s not going to complain.

“C’mere,” Chat Noir says, even though he’s the one going to her. There might something cold and unfeeling about the suit he’s in, but he makes do as he wraps his arm around her shoulders, tries to imagine what her blanket must feel like, what kind of comfort it’ll give him once he’s home. She feels stiff at first, which doesn’t really surprise him, but eventually she relaxes, even nestling into his side and laying her head on his shoulder. 

If he listens, he swears he can hear her whisper, “You did it.” Breathe it like she’s talking to herself. But he’s not about to read too much into it. It seems like something only she’s allowed to hear.

It feels… comfortable. And right. And safe. He wonders how often something like this happens for her. She wonders if she gets to feel this way, too. If she does right now.

“You ever consider wearing your hair down more often?” It’s the only thing he says to break the silence as she lays his cheek against the crown of her head. It’s soft, and it smells good—which he’ll never, ever say out loud if he wants to keep his hide—and he finds himself playing with the ends of it more than he meant to. “Looks nice on you.”

There she goes, stiff again. Does she really hate it that much? It takes her longer to come back, and even then, he swears he can sense something—fear, or discomfort—lingering under her skin. Maybe even in her bones. “It’s just for bed,” she says, bumping his hand away, and for a moment he lets himself thinking about what it might feel like. What she’d do if he caught it, and held onto it, just for a while. What she’d do if she knew who he really was. But then she pats the back of his hand, as if in apology, and little by little she sinks against his body again. Like, maybe, she’s thinking about that night again.

“That song you sang really does freak me out,” she admits, just barely a whisper over her own music. “Something about a cat on a roof?”

Chat Noir laughs nervously. “I didn’t even know you were still awake.”

“It’s a Friday night. Of course I was still awake. I was just…” Marinette pauses; she doesn’t need to finish her sentence. “Did you not want me to be, or something?”

“No, I… I’m glad you were.” He follows her silence, gives her shoulder a light squeeze. “Do you know any better songs?”

“I guess. Some.”

The song on her playlist turns over to something a little different; she must have it on shuffle. Instead of Jagged Stone or anything of his genre, this piece is purely instrumental and not too upbeat. It’s got that one instrument that sounds like glitter spilling from the sky, and an accordion—or maybe it’s a bandoneon; he can’t really tell, and he doesn’t care to right now. It must be familiar to her, something she’s listened to hundreds of times for hours on end, because she relaxes instantly, and it isn’t long before she’s humming along with the tune.

He didn’t know Marinette could sing. Not that she belts out the notes or sounds like a fairy tale princess—it’s more like her voice holds that peaceful, up-and-down cadence of someone putting her baby or her lover to sleep. But it sounds right, like this is what her voice is made for, and maybe… if she kept at it just a bit longer, he wouldn’t mind falling asleep for a while. And maybe… if he kept on listening, he could hum along, too. For those lonely Paris nights. If he closes his eyes, he can even see and feel those high, end-of-the-world waters receding, every building slowly righting itself, people gaining life in their limbs and warmth in their flesh, walking around like chaos never happened. His suit morphing from white to grey to black, and the bell falling off and rolling away, useless to him. The cold twists in his heart, gone.

From her place on the floor, Marinette turns the music off, still humming that melody, over and over. Within moments, Chat Noir’s eyes flutter shut, and it isn’t until she wraps her blanket around them both and presses her ear to his chest that he realizes he’s purring.

“You were singing about your lady,” she pauses to say. “So… where is she?”

And then the waters are gone altogether, as though none of those horrors ever existed, and his mind takes him to that sunset moment—the same roof, the same old song on his lips—that moment when Ladybug laid her head on his shoulder and watched the day end with him. The day she said…

“Oh,” he says with a smile only he knows. He holds Marinette closer, pulls her in toward the slowing, languid _thud-thud-thud_ of his heart. “She’s somewhere.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/omnistruck) and a [Tumblr](http://voltisubito.tumblr.com); follow me there for more shenanigans! Feel free to leave comments and questions and stuff in my [Curious Cat](https://curiouscat.me/omnistruck) as well c: and kudos here, too!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!!! I hope you're having a lovely day <3


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